Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Dust Bunnies - S/T out soon on 1980 Records!
Dust Buddies album "Countdown To The Apocalypse Of 2012" on Bandcamp!
Hop on over to dadustbunnies.bandcamp.com and buy, or just stream, the new drone effort by Paul's solo project Dust Buddies. It's a melee of end-of-the-world darkness and nihilism. Kind of like the exact opposite of a Dust Bunnies album!
"We Are Not Alone" out soon on Plustapes
The Dust Bunnies new album "We Are Not Alone" will be out in about a month or two on Chicago's best cassette label Plustapes!
I can't thank Matt Wenzel and Billy Helmkamp enough. I emailed them wondering if anyone would release a Dust Bunnies album and the next thing I knew, I had an email from Dustin at Plustapes and it said Billy and Matt both told him about Dust Bunnies and he was interested in putting something out. I just handed Dustin final mixes on Tuesday, art work is still being developed, but the tape will be out soon!
I recorded "We Are Not Alone" in my apartment between January and February of 2011. Though, I did not have a game plan hardly at all. Instead, a great and organic thing happened. The album emerged like a path through dark woods.
It was greatly inspired by when I was in New Jersey in December. My brother and I took turns showing each other songs on the guitar, I learned a lot of Genesis songs and, by the time I came back to Chicago for New Years, I had two or three loose sketches for "an album" but had no idea what the bigger picture was. I wanted one side to have longer drone-y songs inter-worked with short bits and pieces.
I started tracking the baritone guitar to a click track just playing what would be A to G on a normal guitar. I tried to leave space so that multi-tracking would be able to more cleanly fill in the beats and I had a Harald Grosskopf record stuck in my head. The result was a rough track of what would end up being "Flugzeug", the first song on the album. I listened back, added a phaser on the organs and some regimented but simple drums and the song seemed to grow and turned from late-70s German synth into late 60s psych.
There was no light at the end of the tunnel for me. There was no "this is the way I've always made albums, so this is the way I'll make this album". Everything was touch and go and trial and error. I'd never played a C-baritone guitar, used a Zoom recorder or the recording program I used for this album.
I had no list of songs. I had no lyrics! I had no drummer!!
But, all these things are just parameters to get used to and tired of. So, I used this to my advantage. Just holding on to hope that the end result would be good if I worked hard enough and that if I just made something I wanted to listen to that other people would like it too.
So, going into this record with the chords for "Novocaine" and maybe a song about an airplane and ending up with this completed album is mind-blowing to me. This may be the best album I ever made.
But, that is of little importance. Sure it is important to make music you like and to make yourself happy before making other people happy. My point is that I made it for YOU!
Sitting in a one-bedroom apartment for two months straight in the dead of winter with only a few tiny amps, a tinier recorder, no songs and a lot of cold air no doubt had a cabin-fever effect. I couldn't reach out to other people physically so much, so instead I tried my hardest to reach out to other people musically. I imagine that there are a lot of people who have a hard time leaving the house in winter, and some that have a hard time leaving the house any time.
So, I'll say this: If you feel like you have nothing cool to say to people, if you feel like your brain is a big wad of spaced-out shot nerve endings, if you convince yourself out of going to shows or parties, if you feel like you can't relate to anyone else, "We Are Not Alone". And spring is just around the corner.
p
I can't thank Matt Wenzel and Billy Helmkamp enough. I emailed them wondering if anyone would release a Dust Bunnies album and the next thing I knew, I had an email from Dustin at Plustapes and it said Billy and Matt both told him about Dust Bunnies and he was interested in putting something out. I just handed Dustin final mixes on Tuesday, art work is still being developed, but the tape will be out soon!
I recorded "We Are Not Alone" in my apartment between January and February of 2011. Though, I did not have a game plan hardly at all. Instead, a great and organic thing happened. The album emerged like a path through dark woods.
It was greatly inspired by when I was in New Jersey in December. My brother and I took turns showing each other songs on the guitar, I learned a lot of Genesis songs and, by the time I came back to Chicago for New Years, I had two or three loose sketches for "an album" but had no idea what the bigger picture was. I wanted one side to have longer drone-y songs inter-worked with short bits and pieces.
I started tracking the baritone guitar to a click track just playing what would be A to G on a normal guitar. I tried to leave space so that multi-tracking would be able to more cleanly fill in the beats and I had a Harald Grosskopf record stuck in my head. The result was a rough track of what would end up being "Flugzeug", the first song on the album. I listened back, added a phaser on the organs and some regimented but simple drums and the song seemed to grow and turned from late-70s German synth into late 60s psych.
There was no light at the end of the tunnel for me. There was no "this is the way I've always made albums, so this is the way I'll make this album". Everything was touch and go and trial and error. I'd never played a C-baritone guitar, used a Zoom recorder or the recording program I used for this album.
I had no list of songs. I had no lyrics! I had no drummer!!
But, all these things are just parameters to get used to and tired of. So, I used this to my advantage. Just holding on to hope that the end result would be good if I worked hard enough and that if I just made something I wanted to listen to that other people would like it too.
So, going into this record with the chords for "Novocaine" and maybe a song about an airplane and ending up with this completed album is mind-blowing to me. This may be the best album I ever made.
But, that is of little importance. Sure it is important to make music you like and to make yourself happy before making other people happy. My point is that I made it for YOU!
Sitting in a one-bedroom apartment for two months straight in the dead of winter with only a few tiny amps, a tinier recorder, no songs and a lot of cold air no doubt had a cabin-fever effect. I couldn't reach out to other people physically so much, so instead I tried my hardest to reach out to other people musically. I imagine that there are a lot of people who have a hard time leaving the house in winter, and some that have a hard time leaving the house any time.
So, I'll say this: If you feel like you have nothing cool to say to people, if you feel like your brain is a big wad of spaced-out shot nerve endings, if you convince yourself out of going to shows or parties, if you feel like you can't relate to anyone else, "We Are Not Alone". And spring is just around the corner.
p
Friday, February 11, 2011
"I Like You Sooooo Much" featured in Ball Hall Compilation
The fine folks at Ball Hall had the ingenious idea to compile songs recorded during the big blizzard we had here a week or so ago. Luckily, I happened to be sampling my girlfriend's Casio keyboard that day!
Check it out, y'all.
http://ballhalla.blogspot.com/2011/02/deep-shit-vol-1-2.html
"Deep Shit Vol 1 & 2"
http://www.mediafire.com/?dobgn2a4mu1ffs5
Hope this whets your whistle til our tape We Are Not Alone comes out!
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Song Of The Day moved to facebook!
I used to have a daily (monday-friday) email group called "Song Of The Day Club" where I'd write something about a new song everyday and include an mp3 of the song.
It's on facebook now and you can check out the group here!
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_152356758152299&ap=1
It's on facebook now and you can check out the group here!
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_152356758152299&ap=1
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Dust Bunnies on Wood Sugars season 2
The band met Wood Sugars, a comedy podcast troupe, at The Education Show which is a now-and-then edutainment variety show at Fizz in Chicago. They were funny guys and we were the only music act at the variety show. We showed up in lab coats and played the melodica and the glockenspiel. They asked us for an mp3 and they used it in their first season podcast. Here: http://www.woodsugars.com/listen/itb_s1e7/
For season 2, however, they made the haj to Pilsen and went straight to the source!
http://www.woodsugars.com/listen/itb_s2e1/
Plus they took this video!
Check out all the Wood Sugars podcasts there are today!
For season 2, however, they made the haj to Pilsen and went straight to the source!
http://www.woodsugars.com/listen/itb_s2e1/
Plus they took this video!
Check out all the Wood Sugars podcasts there are today!
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
The Impossible Quiz
The name alone raises blood pressure in certain circles. The Impossible Quiz will waste your life and you will succumb, foolishly laughing all the way. You have been warned. I love this because it employs absurdism the likes of which I thought died with Edward Lear's phenomenally inspiring "The Nonsense Book" or the plays of Eugene Ionesco.
Godspeed.
Play here: http://www.addictinggames.com/theimpossiblequiz.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)